Midway's Greatest Arcade Hits: Vol. 1 Nintendo 64

Defender, the world's first side-scrolling shooter, hit the arcades in 1980. As the pilot of a starfighter that can shoot right and left, drop smart bombs and warp into hyperspace, your job in the game is to save a planet from wave after wave of hostile alien forces. ~Landers, ~Bombers, ~Swarmers and other alien vessels fill the skies, attacking your ship, laying mines and swooping down to kidnap surface-dwelling Humanoids. You should rescue the Humanoids before they reach the top of the screen and blast everything else in sight. The action scrolls horizontally in both directions and your ship can maneuver up, down, left, and right.

A 2D action game from 1982, Joust puts you in the role of a mounted knight taking flight on an ostrich in order to duel with a fearsome army of evil, the Buzzard Riders. As the dark skies swarm with evil knights, you must win joust after joust. The winner of a joust is the rider whose mount is highest at the moment of contact. When you win a joust, the loser's mount lays an egg in frustration. If the egg doesn't fall into the lava pit below (beware the Troll of the Lava Pits), it will land on one of several platforms; pick up the egg quickly or it will hatch another enemy.

Released to the arcades in 1982, Robotron: 2084 takes place in a dark future where humanity has been all but wiped out by Robotrons, manmade robots gone berserk. Armed with a robot laser gun that shoots up, down, left and right, you and you alone must defend the last human family on the planet. Each screen in this game is a rectangular, 2D playfield in which you are surrounded by Grunt Robotrons, Hulk Robotrons, ~Spheroids ~Quarks, tanks and other enemies and obstacles. You must run around like mad while avoiding contact with and blasting at most anything that moves. To score bonus points, you should touch as many humans as you can, effectively placing them under your protective powers.

An Asteroids-influenced game from 1982, Sinistar puts you in a free-roaming ship deep in outer space. Hidden within the planetoid fields of this vast region of the universe is an ageless phantom face known only as Sinistar. To form its giant, scary shape, it collects floating debris. When the Sinistar has been formed, this fast and powerful being will attack and belt out a fearsome warning. To destroy Sinistar, you must gather minerals from planetoids for use in forging bombs. While collecting minerals, you must shoot warriors, workers and other enemies and obstacles floating in space.

In Root Beer Tapper (a 1984 sanitized release of 1983's Tapper), you are the last of the ~Root Beer Servers, and your places of business (a saloon, a sports bar, a punk bar and an alien bar) are packed with thirsty customers. You must tap "root beer" and dish out mugs of the frosty stuff as cowboys, atheletes, punk rockers and aliens enter the scene and sidle up to rows of bars that run horizontally across the screen. Each customer will not leave until satisfied, so keep dashing from bar to bar and serving mug after mug. If you let a customer reach the end of a bar, you lose a life. If you pick up a tip left by one of your patrons, dancing girls will temporarily distract the customers. Every few screens you can play a shell game-like bonus round in which the Root Beer Bandit shakes and mixes up cans of root beer.

Spy Hunter (circa 1984) is an overhead view, vertically scrolling combat racing game in which the freeways are no longer safe (as if they ever were) and ~BADGUY spies are on the rampage. Your job is to destroy tire-disabling ~Switchblades, bullet proof ~Road Lords and other enemy vehicles while making sure you don't accidentally take out innocent motorists. Your super fast, super powerful car is supplied with machine gun cannons, smoke screens, oil slicks and missiles. Thanks to weapons vans located in strategic areas, armament replacements are available throughout the game. From time to time you will leave the road and take to the waterways in a prototype ~FB-JT101 speedboat.

Joust offers two-player simultaneous mode while the rest of the games feature alternating gameplay. You'll need eight pages of free space on your ~Controller Pak in order to save your high scores, settings and controller configurations. In addition to the games, this package offers a special Arcade Trivia challenge in which you can test your knowledge of videogame facts and history. ~ Brett Alan Weiss, All Game Guide